Last week we decided to travel to Fort Worth, Texas for Thanksgiving. We stayed with Mark's aunt and uncle and their kids and we had a wonderful time! It helped that the weather was around 75 degrees! Nice! Here's a little bit about the trip broken down into days:
Monday: We left at 4:45 am and stopped in Tuscola to drop Mark's car off at a friends house to get worked on while we were gone. Then we left for the long day of traveling. We stopped around 9:30 for breakfast. Mady was up the first hour of the trip but then fell asleep for about 2 hours. We learned that after a certain point in southern illinois things just kind of go extinct. We had to wait about 45 minutes just to find a McDonalds to eat. The drive down was pretty good. Mady did well and slept for about 2 hours in the afternoon. We stopped for dinner outside of Dallas at a place called "Soulman's BBQ." It definitley looked ghetto but it was absolutely amazing! Mark was in heaven! We hit some traffic around Dallas and got in to John & Keli's house at about 7:30 that evening. Mady had fallen asleep about 15 minutes outside of our destination but woke up quickly once she met her cousins. We chatted for a few minutes and then headed to bed. Loooong day!
Tuesday: We got up and lounged around until about noon just talking and hanging out. Mady got to play with her cousins and all the toys. She especially liked making bracelets with her cousin, Katie. All we heard all week was "bracelets, bracelets." At one point in the morning Madalyn actually fell asleep in my lap while she was sitting with me which is extremely unusual. I guess it was taking her a while to catch up from the long day on Monday. After her afternoon nap we headed down to downtown Fort Worth where we visited the stockyards. It was really neat. There were a bunch of little stores along the streets and there were even "cowboys" on horses riding along the streets. Mady wouldn't pet the horses though. At 4pm every day there is a cattle drive down the road so that was the highlight of the trip for Mady. The cowboys herded the huge longhorn cattle down the road in front of all the people. It was like a big cow parade. Mady was yelling "hi cows" the whole time and definitley enjoying herself. Daddy let her sit on one of the cows named "Big Jake" and she loved that. I was surprised that she sat on this huge cow but wouldn't pet the little horse. Oh well. After walking around for a while we decided to hit one of the Mexican restaurants in town. So good! I had been craving tacos so it was perfect! It was a good day!
Wednesday:
We relaxed in the morning and gave the kids naps and then Mark's aunt and her son came in the afternoon. Mark's grandma was scheduled to come also but was unable to due to a nasty cold. After they arrived, we spent some time catching up while the kids played in the back yard! Yep, it was still 75 degrees and sunny. Madalyn loved playing on the HUGE swingset with all of her cousins. We then decided to go to a place called Central Market in Fort Worth. It's an amazing grocery story everything you could imagine. A lot of it is fresh and organic. www.centralmarket.com They have a restaurant in the side of it that we had dinner at. The food was amazing. Afterwards, the kids went outside of the restaurant and played on the attached playground while Mark's Aunt Chris and I went to walk through the store. It was so neat to see everything they had. We had fun walking up and down the aisles looking at some of the more expensive things and laughing at the prices. I did buy a few things :) Across the street from Central Market was a big U shaped formation of various stores. We drove through as every tree and every light pole was decorated with a ton of Christmas lights. It was beautiful. Madalyn got a big kick out of the lights! We then rented movies and went home and watched The Bucket List.
Thursday:
Happy Thanksgiving! Mark actually let me sleep in and it was glorious! After I got up we watched the parade with the family and then Chris and her son came over. We hung around and chatted all day and had a beautiful Thanksgiving dinner! It was soooo good! I could've eaten a ton more than I did! We pretty much crashed after that watching the A&M football game! I think Mark and I even went to bed early as we were so tired! Oh, we also said our goodbyes to Aunt Keli and the kids as we were planning to leave extremely early the next morning! It was so sad to leave. We had a great time and really enjoyed seeing everyone.
Friday:
We left the house by 4:45am and were home a little after 7pm. I drove most of the way home. It's funny - I realized that if I was driving then Mady would pretty much stay quiet in the back seat as if not to bother dad. If Mark was driving and she saw that I was "available" she'd would talk, ask for books, want me to play with her, etc. So, I much preferred to drive. And it was great. If she wasn't sleeping then she was just sitting in her seat looking out the window. She did great on both the trip down and the trip back. I was so proud of her! It was also funny as we were driving through Fort Worth and Dallas to see all of the people standing in lines at the major stores for Black Friday Sales. It kind of made me want to be there but that was only for a split second!!!!
Thanks to our family in Texas for letting us visit! We had a wonderful time! Hopefully we'll be able to do it again soon!!!
2 comments:
i love central market! :) i was excited when we finally got one in dallas (after experiencing it in college at austin). it's kinda a cross between whole foods and a local grocery store. :)
so y'all rooted for a&m, huh? :P well, i can't say that i'm sad that they lost to UT. :P
We were rooting for A&M because if not we would have been mauled in the living room! Ha!
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